Forget everything I taught you about cubing, it’s wrong.

Well, that’s a bit extreme, but I have painted a picture of cubing that is less than accurate. In fact the mistake that I’ve made is one that a lot of beginning cubers make. If there was a proper understanding of this topic there would be a larger cubing community today.

In “So You Must Be REALLY Good at Math, Right?” I discussed how speedcubing isn’t actually as hard as it is perceived to be. In “All Cubers are Autistic” I discussed stereotypes against speedcubers, referring to one of the best speedcubers today, Max Park. And in “A Cuber on the Unemployment Line,” I discussed the benefit of speedcubing as a hobby.

Sensing a trend? With the exception of 1 blog, I’ve only discussed cubing through the lense of speedcubing.

Collin Burns sets the world record of 5.25 seconds in 2015. The current world record is 4.22 seconds.

I know what you’re thinking if you’re not a cuber, “There’s a difference?!!?”

Yes! The fact that this is not apparent is detrimental towards the growth of the hobby, as it limits what people think they can do as a part of the community. What else does the cubing community have to offer and why is this not more apparent?

The Modder:

Mod: Short for modification. When someone changes the functionality, appearance, shape, size, etc. of a puzzle.

Within the sub-set of modder there are many other subsets:

There are those that mod stickers (that’s what I do, it’s the easiest one).

Some people take existing speed puzzles and make them better (this is slowly dying as we get services like cubicle pro shop/cubicle labs and better puzzle mechanisms in general).

And finally, what most cubers think of, the modder that acts almost as a sculptor, cutting, sanding, and building up puzzles to create uniquely shaped cubes that turn in interesting new ways.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=515&v=JTe4O7PW73Q

The YouTuber:

Known as the “Youcuber” these individuals create content for cubers to watch, usually on YouTube. Youcubers often fit into other categories as well, with the majority of videos about unboxing puzzles, reviewing them, and making tutorials from a speedcuber’s perspective.

Other YouCubers focus on pure entertainment or historical information.

The Speedcuber:

We’ve arrived to the classic cuber archetype: the one who can solve a puzzle quickly and competes in WCA competitions.

Why is this the most common picture of a cuber?

Articles about cubing in the news offer some insight:

“Teen breaks record for blind-solving Rubik’s cube”

“New Jersey Rubik’s Cube champion gets into Princeton” (Hey that’s my friend Daniel!)

“Rubik’s Cube championship in Salt Lake City draws hundreds of puzzlers”

None of these articles are talking about modding cubes or making videos. For those who don’t know anything about cubing, speedsolving is both the most accessible and intriguing topic related to cubing. So non-cubers hear about cubing through speedcubing, and of course cubers start cubing as non-cubers too, so their introduction to the hobby is through speedsolving as well. No matter the demographic we all seem to start at speedcubing.

It doesn’t have to be this way. If we have better cubing communicators, we can do a  better job of portraying all aspects of cubing to help grow other parts of the hobby.

The Others:

Puzzle designer- Similar to modders, but they don’t modify, they create. This can mean making speed puzzles mechanisms for a company or 3D printing some of the most intense puzzles in existence.

WCA delegate- Not to be confused with a speedcuber, these individuals spend their time organizing and running cubing competitions. At high levels of the WCA some members with higher titles than delegate can even be in charge of whole regions of countries, WCA rules and regulations, or the WCA budget.

Cube science- Though currently this is basically one person, Chris Tran, it will certainly grow in the future (I hope to contribute one day as a materials science major). Chris applied his chemistry knowledge from years of education to develop cubing technology that has become integral in cubing hardware today through Cubicle Labs and Angstrom Research. Chris Tran is proof that any cuber with a good idea can create a whole new subset of cubing.

Collectors- Pretty self-explanatory, they try to get the rarest and hardest puzzles out there.

Solvers- Many people are not interested in speed, rather they want to learn how to solve the thousands of types of puzzles that aren’t solved for speed in WCA competitions. Often these are much harder.

I did my best to share examples of people who fit only one category, but this is difficult to do. I consider myself a little bit of everything listed in the title plus a collector. I’m sure there are cubers that could fit basically every category, while others are happy within their niches.

So maybe you try cubing and find that speedsolving is not for you. Don’t quit, there’s plenty left to be discovered in the cubing community.

What unites cubers with the kendama community, sport stackers (competitive cup stacking), and the most passionate philatelists (stamp collectors)?

Kendama (left), sports stacking (bottom right), and philately (top right).

Others doubting the practicality of our hobbies. Isn’t that fun!

This is a serious issue for many cubers. The community is young; a large portion of the community is around 10-15 years old. And behind many young cubers is a skeptical parent limiting the time their child spends on a “useless toy.”

       Average age in the r/Cubers subreddit

Why isn’t cubing recognized as a productive activity full of opportunity by the average parent?

Before we get to that let’s settle the “cubing isn’t useful” argument…

Let’s start by looking at other hobbies/extracurriculars commonly deemed more productive than cubing:

1. Sports: Many parents would love their kids to get involved in organized sports. Sports teach sportsmanship and it involves physical exertion not to mention the boat-loads of money associated with scholarships and going pro.
2. Academic endeavors: If your kid isn’t physically gifted, chances are that they’re mentally gifted. Academic team, hack-a-thons, school organized debates, technology competitions, and math competitions all can help build a resume and hone academic skills for future educational success.
3. Volunteering/leadership: Developing leadership skills through starting a club, project, or volunteer project is also a great way to develop skills that are valued later on in life.

So it seems that we value leadership, friendship, sportsmanship, the pursuit of knowledge, competition, physical exertion, money, and resume building.

Surely cubing has none of these right?

Stick around in the community for long enough and you will find yourself becoming a leader. I have been in the community for 6 years, and I have built a following from my YouTube channel.

On top of that, after a while you begin to make connections with prominent figures, and pretty soon you’re staffing competitions, starting clubs (Penn State Cubing coming soon!), and organizing competitions (coming soon too!).

With how interconnected the community is with its organizational body the WCA (World Cube Association), it’s only a matter of time before a novice cuber gains some leadership experience.

Another benefit of that community connectivity is in developing friendships. Making friends at a competition is perhaps the easiest thing to do at a competition. Most cubers are very open-minded, and small talk is very easy to initiate when you already have so much in common. Some of my closest friends are from cubing, not to mention the countless acquiescence I’ve made from all over the country at national competitions.

                                The very social atmosphere of an average cubing competition

Cubing is a sport (well at least I consider it one, but that’s a debate for another time). But what’s undeniable is that cubing competitions are inherently competitive in the right ways. Cubing teaches its young community the value of hard work to improve through personal competition rather than aggressive external competition like some sports.  Because the goal is to beat your own times in the beginning, by the time an individual gets world class and skilled enough to externally compete, they’ve developed the sportsmanship to compete healthfully. The best cubers then demonstrate this sportsmanship to the younger generation of future stars, starting the cycle all over again.

My good friend Daniel Karnaukh sets the world record single for Square-1 and is congratulated by my other good friend Daniel Goodman with the most wholesome hug of all time.

Well, one thing I can give sports is physical exertion. Though cubing doesn’t have much movement, it will certainly help with finger dexterity, and at a high level I have even seen cubers weight train. Besides wicked hand muscles this is the one thing cubing truly lacks.

In a similar sense cubing also isn’t inherently academic, but it opens countless doors to learn about puzzle theory. Though abstract, I cannot stress enough the benefits of sharpening spatial reasoning skills. We often say “spatial reasoning” because we really don’t know what to call it. Understanding how a puzzle works and then applying that knowledge to other puzzles doesn’t really have a name, it’s almost an intangible that applies to real life in ways you wouldn’t expect.

Just one example of how cubing links to academics is through the math concept of permutations. I wrote a paper in high school about deriving an equation for calculating a puzzle’s number of combinations. The academics are there if you look for them!

       Derivation of the Formula for the Possible Permutations of Even Layered                     3x3xn Cuboid Twisty Puzzles

I bet you think that money also belongs in the “ehhh not really” category with physical exertion and academics, but pro cubers are becoming more and more common. Content creators like me receive sponsorships from companies like thecubicle.us as well as Google adsense money from YouTube. Cubers can make money by selling cubes, performing professionally, or, my personal dream, being so good that they’re paid to use a certain company’s puzzle and travel to competitions all around the world. The fact of the matter is you’re just as likely to go pro in cubing as in basketball, maybe even more likely, so you won’t see many cubers in the unemployment line (especially because many of them can’t work yet!)

    The Ninja Star Cube, one of many “sticker                     mods” that I make and sell

And as for resume building I’d say a good 50% of my resume is cubing related, all of my college application essays were about cubing, and I’m doing just fine.

So I think I’ve proven in a rather long-winded manner that cubing is just as productive and practical as many other hobbies or extracurriculars. So that leaves us with the the original question posed: why is not viewed as such?

It’s quite simple: we dismiss what we don’t understand.

Whaddya know, this topic also relates back to the failure of cubing to have a communicator! When cubing doesn’t effectively communicate what it is to the general public, the public doesn’t understand it and dismisses it.

So whether it’s cubing or stamp collecting, make sure to keep an open mind before making a snap judgment.

The last couple posts have been.. aggressively thought-provoking and depressing. Let’s talk about something mindless! How about adjectives!

There exists an issue that not just cubers, but all YouTube reviewers have had since the dawn of the video sharing platform MANY eons ago in 2005…

How do I REALLY know how something feels/works/looks like if I don’t have it in my own two hands to feel for myself?????

After all, when going to YouTube to find your next phone, laptop, pencil, or toilet paper (I don’t know you can find some weird reviews on YouTube) you need a good description so you know what to buy.

The answer: the humble adjective.

Let’s take a look at an example. Do you think, I don’t know, eraser reviews exist?

You bet! Notice the use of descriptive adjectives used to further elaborate on qualities beyond the obvious quantitative erasing measurements. Erasers can be “soft,” pressure-wise they can be “light,” or their eraser dust can be “whole.” These words are used to bridge the gap between the viewer and reviewer, allowing the viewer to imagine holding the eraser in their hand so they can make a better decision on what to get.

Cubing is no different. In order to demonstrate how a new speedcube with a different eternal mechanism functions and feels, cube reviewer uses adjectives; specifically what I call “cube descriptors.”

Why do I give them a fancy name? Because cube descriptors are not English.

Tell me, how would describe a “plastic on plastic” feeling to somebody who couldn’t feel it for themselves? Got something? Great now distinguish that from the other hundreds of “plastic” feels that exist from other puzzles.

The truth is, no English words exist that accurately describe this feeling. This a a problem for video reviewers in many niche hobbies across YouTube. How do they convey a feeling to the audience? The answer: hijack other adjectives.

Crunchy- Making a sharp noise when bitten or crushed and (of food) pleasantly crisp.

I hope nobody is eating their Rubik’s cubes, and yet…

Credit: Phil Yu of thecubicle.us (They sponsor me, check them out if you want to purchase a puzzle!)

Do you think that’s funny? Laugh it up, but we get pretty desperate sometimes, using words like “papery,” “airy,” “sandy,” or “crispy.”

Credit: DGCubes

But perhaps the king of them all, the title itself…

Credit: JRCuber, CrazyBadCuber, Cyoubx, TheRealJCube

Yes, we cubers love our smooth cubes. By the way, all of those reviews were for the ShengShou Aurora. It seems like there is a consensus that the puzzle is smooth… I don’t know, you tell me.

“But wait!” I hear you cry out desperately, “these ARE English words, they’re just used in creative ways!”

I present to you, exhibit B:

In English we have antonyms, words with opposite meanings used to describe opposite things. However because cube feel is an inherently abstract idea, and we assign English words to describe these feelings the best we can, we get situations like these:

(antonyms highlighted in alternate colors for your convenience!)

Credit: LaZer0MonKey, JRCuber, DGCubes, SpeedCubeReview, CrazyBadCuber

I’m not making fun of these reviewers. In fact I’ve probably done this a couple of times myself on my own channel, but it’s just so funny to see how truly hard it is to describe a cube or lube feeling to an audience.

Cube descriptors are not English. They are merely cheap stand-ins for words that don’t exist. Cube feels are a language of their own, and perhaps one day we will have even established an adjective “bank” to accurately describe these feelings in a manner that is not so inexact and subjective.

So now that you are aware of what these words mean, let’s bring it back to cubing in the mainstream. Is this practice detrimental to the growing understanding boundary between the mainstream and cubing? Is this preventing new cubers from getting into the hobby? Is cubing going to die?!?

Don’t panic, the answer (this time) is no. I’m aware that this blog has painted a picture of niche hobby doomed to never be truly understood by the mainstream, but cube descriptors are actually a benefit to the layman’s knowledge of cubing.

Hearing familiar words being used to describe cubes is easy and inviting. Though inexact, if you try enough cubes you can get the general picture of what each descriptor means. For now it does it’s job, albeit awkwardly.

Does this mean I don’t want a cubing language? Nope, that would be awesome, but maybe that’s for another day.

This one’s a bit heavy, prepare yourselves. I am not the first one to experience this problem, and I certainly won’t be the last… bullying.

People of all ages in all sorts of interesting communities face misconceptions developed just to belittle them and their interests. Bullying is intolerance, and in many cases this intolerance stems from misconceptions. In this way the issue of bullying is an issue in the lack of communication between a community and the general public.

Before we get to cubing let’s take a look at some other examples of misconceptions about niche communities targeted by bullies to get a sense of what techniques these individuals use to attack a community.

I want to preface this by saying that none of these opinions are shared by me and many of them can be considered offensive and upsetting. Feel free to skip to the discussion of cubing if this sounds like something you do not want to read.

E-sports

Pro gamers hear the same criticism over and over again, mostly concerning how what they do is not a sport and they waste their time on meaningless games. Let’s play a quick game called Who Said This, a 10-year-old on a YouTube Comment or a Grown Man?!?!!

“eSports is for booger eaters.”

SURVEY SAYS:

Yep. That’s a grown man with his own sports podacst. He also says gamers have social anxiety, never go outside, and live in their parents house. What a class act. It brings me physical pain to watch that clip.

WNBA

The Women’s National Basketball Association has been criticized for its entire existence. Despite support from nearly every important male basketball talent in the game, fans of basketball still hold misconceptions about the WNBA that they use to target that community.

You don’t have to look further than the comment section of that video to find some examples:

“Women Not Being Attractive”

“I can’t wait till the-real basketballers play”

Another common joke is to is to refer to a WNBA player’s “points per game” stat as “sandwiches per game,” which to me is a discouraging sign that maybe we haven’t made as much progress as we thought with gender equality in this country.

Clearly the stereotype latched onto by these individuals relates to gender roles. Women are not “supposed” to be athletic. They are “supposed” to be moms with domestic roles that are focused on their looks.

Cubing

We see from the e-sports and WNBA communities that stereotypes are drawn on in order to develop misconceptions that are used to attack that group. What about in cubing?

The stereotypical misconception of a cuber is somewhat similar to that of the pro gamer. We are often perceived to waste our time on a meaningless toy. We’re nerds without social skills living in our mom’s house. The only difference from gaming that we have is that cubing is viewed as eccentric and unique, unlike the common video game.

So the conclusion for some becomes: gaming is to a social reclusivity, as cubing is to autism.

Of course this stereotype stems from Savant Syndrome, where particular autistic individuals demonstrate amazing abilities in very specific niche hobbies.

First let’s dispel this myth that leads to the conclusion of autism:

1. Cubing is practical in that it is a hobby; everyone needs a hobby. Yes, it can teach you some basic things about memorizing or fine motor skills, but more importantly it challenges the individual’s focus. Cubing teaches discipline, self-improvement, and social skills, which leads us into…
2. Cubers are social. A cubing competition is probably the most social event I’ve ever been to in my life, and the community is so accepting a tight-knit that it is a certainty that you will develop life long friendships if you start.
3. You do not need to be a savant to solve a Rubik’s cube.
4. Are we all nerds? Lets just say that a lot of cubers are academically oriented, but certainly not all.

All it took was understanding of the community, and the autism stereotype was completely debunked. While I’m not a pro gamer or WNBA player, I can guarantee that the same issue exists. The issue is communication.

So while we probably won’t be able to change the minds of the hard-headed intolerant bullies of YouTube, better communication about cubing can help stop the portrayal of cubers as strange social outcasts, ultimately helping draw in new members to the community.

As someone who has been on the other side of bullying, especially given my online presence in cubing, I can offer this advice. Remember that these bullies are often compensating for a lack of intelligence, self esteem, or general direction in life. I honestly hope that they find that direction; maybe they should pick up a hobby, I hear cubing is great.

__________________________________________________

An interesting note I wanted to add is the story of Max Park, arguably one of the best cubers on the planet. He also just so happens to have autism. The documentary Why We Cube by Chris Olsen not only shows an accurate picture of cubing for those unfamiliar with the hobby, but it dissects the story of 4 cubers and how the Rubik’s Cube affected their lives.  It’s interesting to hear how cubing has brought Max out of his social shell, and how cubing, contrary to the stereotype discussed in this blog, can help atypical individuals with autism, ADHD, and OCD among other things.